HOW OIL INDUSTRY AFFECTS SEA ECOSYSTEMS

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Oil pollution is a big threat above all for sea and seaside ecosystems.  The main causes are:

1.     Wreck of oil tankers due to collision, fire and crash.

2.     Oil leakage from shore storage.

3.     Washing oil tankers into the sea.

Each year this kind of accident leads to coming in to the Ocean about 10 million ton of raw oil.

It is known that without oil products, modern traffic system cannot exist. But we humans are not ready to use and drink the water, which contain oil and oil products.

It is important to observe necessary security measures in order to oil products, despite their mass use, do not harm our environment. Pollution by oil products with lighting speed spoils ecology. Therefore each of us should be on guard of purity of earth and water. Most of all it is water, which suffers from oil products: rivers, lakes, seas and reservoirs. Primarily it harms fishes, especially during spawning. Cases, when fish vanishes in some areas partially or entirely are already fixed. If during spawning oil products hit caviar, they envelope it and caviar settle on a bottom and perishes. That is why If we want to go for a fishing and eat fish following several tens years, we must clean all water sewage from oil products.

Oil, arriving in water or soil breaks all vital processes. It suppress bacterial self-cleaning, changes the metabolism direction. Oil is so cruel to the nature, that in place of oil flood, the grass doesn’t grow for years. Oil products under natural conditions decay for many years, harming the nature.

If we want than also next generations could enjoy greens of the nature, fish in ponds, rivers and seas, we must solve this problem now. Today we have only two solutions:

First one is the simplest one, do not treat our nature negligently and prevent its pollution. Second one - inevitable in case if pollution took place – is to apply special substances, which will help to overcome with focus of flood and prevent its further spreading. So today we have the following methods of strive with oil flood:

1.     Protection of the coastline from oil spot by floating barriers (harbours);

2.     Searing of heavy oil fractions;

3.     Collection of oil and injection to special cleaning vessels;

4.     Treatment of oil spot with special bacteria (for example - Pseudomonas), who decompose hydrocarbons;

5.     Laying of routes of oil tankers far from ecologically vulnerable coasts;

6.     Adoption of new ballast systems.

All of all, owing to usage of these methods, it is possible to locate pollution area and try to clean it as much as possible.

STRUGGLE AGAINST STORM WATER

Rooftop Garden

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Today I would like to write about the article I read in “The Guardian”. This article was prepared by Jim Robbins, for Yale Environment 360, the part of Guardian Environment Network.  This article is about storm waters, which flow to water reservoirs and methods people use to prevent this.

Diffuse pollution — a problem faced by many regions worldwide.  In fact this pollution affected not only humans, but also all habitants of water reservoir. The article says, that: “Puget Sound, one of America's great estuaries in Seattle has a very rich marine life: there are inhabits killer whales, seals, schools of salmon and others. The presence of such impressive marine life, however, belies the fact that the sound is seriously polluted”.

After the rains, storm water goes into the same system of underground pipes, where this water is collected. Each year 1 billion gallons overflow into the river sound because the system contains more water that can be treated. Apart of this water many other substance like motor oil, chemical wastes, heavy metals and etc. also arrive there. How this pollution affected marine habitants? The number investigations have been done, for example, the samples of killer whales taken from blowhole, have detected fungi, different kind of viruses and bacteria, living in their respiratory track. And I think the most worrying is that some of these viruses are antibiotic-resistant. Also salmon in streams are killed by torrents of dirty storm water. The question is, what can be done to solve the problem?  One of the methods, which is successfully using all over the world, storm water runoff called “ Green Infrastructure”.  What is “Green Infrastructure”?  Green Infrastructure is a concept originating in the United States in the mid-1990s that highlights the importance of the natural environment in decisions about land-use planning. In particular there is an emphasis on the "life support" functions provided by a network of natural ecosystems, with an emphasis on interconnectivity to support long-term sustainability. Examples include clean water and healthy soils, as well as the more anthropocentric functions such as recreation and providing shade and shelter in and around towns and cities. Green infrastructure is the harnessing of the natural processes of trees and other vegetation — so-called ecosystem services — to carry out the functions of the built systems. Green infrastructure often intercepts the water before it can run into streets and become polluted and stores the water for gradual release through percolation or evapotranspiration. Trees also clean dirty water through natural filtering functions.

Seattle is one of the early adopters of this method. What they do is preserving existing wetlands critical to cleaning water and storing runoff.  The residences of Seattle also been asked to install “rain gardens” (A rain garden is a planted depression that allows rainwater runoff from impervious urban areas like roofs, driveways, walkways, parking lots, and compacted lawn areas the opportunity to be absorbed. This reduces rain runoff by allowing storm water to soak into the ground They can be designed for specific soils and climates. The purpose of a rain garden is to improve water quality in nearby bodies of water. Rain gardens can cut down on the amount of pollution reaching creeks and streams by up to 30%).

But not only Seattle who uses this method, also for example Toronto is the first city who requires green roofs on all new commercial building. This roofs are part of storm water treatment system.

Another green infrastructure tool is permeable pavement, which is made of materials that allow water to soak through into the ground instead of running off. In Chicago the city is modifying its urban alleys with permeable pavement and with "cool" pavement that reduces temperatures. One limitation is that permeable pavement can't be used for regular streets because plowing and sanding damage it.

The benefits of this method of course not only storm water treatment, but also for example, the air becoming cleaner due to increasing amount of greenings.

In conclusion, I would like to say that this article was a very big surprise for me, because I even didn’t aware of such method of strife with storm water. And it is bring me some happiness because storm water is really big concern of water reservoir pollution. Maybe this method doesn’t solve all problems, but obviously a big part of it.  I really hope in the future we would be able to find a new ways and methods to prevent our sea, rivers and marine fauna from such kind of troubles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/23/how-cities-nature-cut-pollution

http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/greeninfrastructure/index.cfm

      http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/casestudies_specific.cfm?case_id=14

http://www.cleanwatercampaign.com/html/636.htm

WATER - is the LIFE

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    Hello everyone. My name is Kamila.  I hope you enjoy my blog. Thanks in advance for your comments and participation.

I want to start with introduction to my blog by saying how important water is in our lives.

   Today in the world there are a lot of ecological and environmental problems, but in my blog I will wright about water pollutions caused both by industrial and domestic waste.

   I think many of us know the expression: “Water – is the life”.  And this is all true, because human being cannot live without water more than 3 days. Even though realizing all the importance of the role of water in our lives, we still continue rigidly maintain water reservoirs, irretrievably changing their natural mode with different kinds of waste.

  We have a big amount of water on our planet, but the problem is that 97% of this water is saline water of seas and oceans and only 3% is fresh water. Three fourth of this fresh water (0.75%) is almost inaccessible to live organisms as this water "is preserved" in glaciers of mountains and polar caps (glaciers of the Arctic and Antarctic). It is a reserve of fresh water. From the water available to live organisms, the main part is concluded in their tissues.

   The bulk of water is concentrated in oceans. Water evaporating from its surface gives reviver to natural and artificial ecosystems of a land. Closer the area to the ocean amount of precipitation will be higher. The land constantly returns water to the ocean, part of water evaporates, especially by the wood; river collects some part, where water of rains and snows come in. The exchange of moisture between an ocean and a land demands very large amount of energy: about 1/3 of the energy that Earth receives from the Sun is spent for it.

  The water cycle in the biosphere before development of a civilization was equilibrium; the ocean received so much water from the rivers, as much spent on its evaporation. If the climate didn't change, the water level in lakes didn't decrease. With civilization development this cycle began to break. As a result of watering of crops evaporation from a land increased.  The rivers of the southern areas shoaled, ocean pollution and occurrence on its surface of oil slick, decreased the amount of water evaporated by ocean. All this worsens biosphere water supply. Droughts become more frequent, there are centers of ecological disasters, for example, a long-term catastrophic drought in Sahel's zone. (More about Sahel can be read here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel_drought).

    Besides, fresh water which retreat to ocean and other water reservoirs from a land is often polluted, practically not suitable for drink.

Formerly, exhaustless resource – fresh pure water – now became exhaustible.  Nowadays the water suitable for drink, industrial production and irrigation is insufficient in many regions of the world.

   I know that most of us do not realize the global dimension of the problem but according to the data of a number of European organizations, more than 5 million people in the world annually die from diseases caused by the consumption of dirty or infected water. At present 31 countries in the world and more than 1 billion people have no regular access to pure water. Every 8 seconds in the world a child dies who has drunk non drinkable water. If in the North America each inhabitant consumes on the average 1700 cubic meters of water a year, in Africa it is only 250. Over the last 50 years sources of water in the countries of Africa were reduced by three quarters, and in Asia – on two thirds. Drinking water in Africa is drunk only by 60 percent of the population, and 50 percent of the African population suffers from the diseases caused by polluted water.

   Summarizing above mentioned I want people to be considerate of our environment and always be conscious of reducing clean water consumption by avoiding unnecessary use of the clean water.

Also, industry should take responsibility to take care of the environment by recycling and cleaning waste and prevent the flow of the waste to the water by implementing pollution control facilities.

I hope each of you had a take away from this. I will be writing on this topic continuously in this blog, stay tuned for more.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_pollution

http://www.nrdc.org/water/